Time management

Time management can be a challenge during the holidays.  Work demands continue, personal to do’s pile up yet many just want to relax as the year winds down.  

The time crunch is being more acutely felt this year:

• those in jobs feel overstretched (a result of the lean and mean approach by many employers looking to survive the recession) and 
• those not in jobs feel compelled to continue job searching over the holidays (for more on Smart Career Strategies Over the Holidays, tune into my career segment on Morning Living SIRIUS 112/XM 157 Wed 12/15/09 8am ET.)

To help you get it all done this holiday season, here are some of my favorite time saving tips:

• Get your to do’s out of your head.  This was a key insight from my interview with time management guru David Allen on Making a Living.  It takes a lot of brain space to maintain a to do list so free up your own mental productivity by capturing what’s in your head and organizing those to do’s in your calendar.   You’ll be better able to focus on the task at hand when you’re not thinking about the other 10 to do’s on your list.  Click below to learn more about David Allen’s very effective Getting Things Done approach.  

• Start each day with a plan.  When I was working on consulting projects at Arthur Andersen I learned that you need to “go slow to go fast”.  In other words, an hour of planning is worth a week of doing.  It can feel more productive to get started but doing the task correctly the first time will lead to less rework later.  For more great time saving tips from project managers click here.  

• Overestimate completion time.  Being an optimist, I often plan for the best outcome to my projects and activities.  However, sometimes thing take more time than I’ve allotted and the ensuing time crunch becomes yet another thing on my to do list to manage.  I’ve learned to be more conservative in my estimates and put more space into my calendar between appointments.  And on those days when things go smoothly, I enjoy the extra time by calling a friend or enjoying a quiet cup of tea.  It’s a win-win rather than a lose-lose.

You don’t have to stress out this holiday season.  You can make time for the most important (and fun) activities in your life and in your work.   For more time saving tips, join me this afternoon on Living Today 3:30p ET with host Mario Bosquez.  Tune in with this free trial of SIRUS and call in at 866-675-6675!

Happy Holidays!

"Find a job your like and you add five days to every week." - H. Jackson Browne

(Photo attribution)

Recently I was invited to speak at PepsiCo on the subject of working smarter not harder. Having spent much of my career in corporate America, I know many workers feel stretched just to keep up with daily activities.

With this in my mind, I was shocked and saddened to read a recent Economist article about an employee in Japan who had died from overwork. Just thirty years old, the father of two died after working successive 80 hour work weeks for the previous 6 months.

Working these hours, life starts to feel like a treadmill. You're running faster and faster each day but not getting very far. You see it happening yet continue with the routine not knowing how to stop and get off. If this sounds like you (I've been there too), here are two useful resources you might want to check out: